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Stretching the Thalamus:
For those wondering what the Thalamus is, it is not the name of Greece’s national football coach. It is the part of our brain that controls (or sometimes lets go out of control) our imagination!
Nothing captures our imagination like cricket or Sunny Leone in India. We will leave the latter for later and concentrate on the former alone. (Apologies for the disappointment, guys!!). I was going through Team India’s itinerary in the days to come, and one particular entry just refuses to go off my mind! I have been racking my brains to figure out who would be on the team for ‘that’ game :-) I am pretty sure there are millions out there who have the same question as I do! Behold, Ladies and Gentlemen…. Presenting,
‘The Pepsi T20 football Selections’
– A true incident in an Indian Captain’s life
- Captain and the Vice Captain!!
Leh, 12th June morning, 2012:
For the umpteenth time since morning, N.Srinivasan’s number flashed on MSD’s mobile. And for the umpteenth time, he just watched it ring out silently. ‘Why does Aircel cover these areas?? These people don’t leave me at peace even in Ladakh’, he thought to himself. ‘First they ask me to agree to buying him for $2m, then they ask me not to give him any work with bat or ball in the final, heaven knows what now!’. His mobile rang again. Panicked, he looked at the caller ID. Not Srini. ‘Phew!! Luck hasn’t deserted me completely’.
Dhoni: ‘Hello, this is MS’.
The person on the other end: ‘Gotchaaa!! This is Srini!! Net-to-Phone. Enough jokes!! This is serious and urgent!! We need to select our team for the next match.’
Dhoni: ‘But the CLT20 is in October, boss!!’
Srini: ‘Ayyo! Not CSK, Indian team.’
Dhoni: ‘Can’t we do it after I return?? The New Zealand series is still a month away!!!’
Srini: ‘No-ball means…. no Pepsi… Remember?!!?’
MSD had a vague recollection of a Pepsi ad with Drogba, Torres and Lamps. Oh God! The Pepsi T20 football match is on Sunday!!!!
Chennai, 12th June late night, 2012:
MSD walked into Srini’s office at around 10 pm. Also present were Kris Srikkanth, Sunny, Ravi, SRK and….the entire Indian cricket team. ‘Oh my God!! Entire team???’, wondered a stunned MSD.
Srini: ‘Sorry MS, people wanted transparency, so we decided to try out this ‘novel’ initiative!! We are planning to introduce this as an ICC…er.. BCCI regulation!!’ :-D
Dhoni: ‘Traitors! I’m sitting out of the next IPL, boss..!! >-( We will see about that later, now how many players are available and how many do we need?’
Srini: ‘We need 7 starters and 2 subs. You are here. We already have our permanent sub Manoj Tiwari too. So we need just another 7 ;-) We sent out invites to 15 players, 10 of them agreed and came here. The others have declined. One has replied ‘You guys never learn, do you?”
Dhoni: ‘He he he he!! Who asked you to send it to Rahul?’
Srini: ‘He was our best ‘defender’!! Should have picked the other name instead, from the ‘drop’box..!! Too late now…! Anyway, we have SRK here to help with team formation.’
- India’s best defender ever… Effectively kicks the ball out of danger if it dares kiss the stumps even after meeting his bat!!!
SRK: ‘Yeah guys, ask me about team ‘formation’, I took 5 years to ‘form’ a proper team, and finally, it is a victory to Bengal… Korbo…Lor..’
Dhoni: ‘You are here to talk about football formations..’
SRK: ‘Oh yeah sorry…. I get it now.. Football !! Beautiful game!! I coached the women’s team to World Cup victory. Chak De!! Preeti Sabarwal, Komal Chautala… ‘
Gauti: ‘Boss, wrong again!!’
SRK: ‘Oh am really so sorry! Just allowed the emotions get the better of me..! Yeah yeah, football.. New Dempo, New Tempo…!’
Srini: ‘I ban SRK from my office for 5 years…’
Dhoni: ‘Hopeless fellows.. We will have 2 strikers, 2 midfielders and 2 defenders. I will be the goalie… We will start picking the strikers.’
Gauti: ‘I had the highest strike-rate in KKR… after my boss…’
Viru: ‘Shut up Gauti, I had the highest strike-rate in the tournament.. 8-)’
Dhoni: ‘Unfortunately, you two will have to be the defenders. Our bowlers can’t ‘defend’ anything…’
Viru: ‘As if they ‘strike’. Remember the Sydney test? I slept off at deep fine leg for an entire session, and woke up only someone called ‘tea’… and Clarke and Ponting were still there…’
Dhoni: ‘Everyone has a day off, I mean, an ‘off-day’…! Unless you are me!! Hope you are listening, Srini…’
Viru: ‘I was talking about all 5 days..! Sorry, I meant 4…!’ ;-)
Dhoni: ‘Okay fine, looks like you don’t agree. We’ll ‘rest’ you and pick Mohammad Kaif. After all, he has been ‘left-back’ all his life’ ;-)
Kris Srikkanth: ‘I know of one defender. He is strong, burly, injured his shoulder in a sliding tackle recently, but still managed to defend a run….’
Dhoni: ‘..because Gilly didn’t run the third seeing him cry, we know who he is… No thanks, Viru and Gauti can manage… We don’t want divers..’
Kohli: ‘Ahem.. Ahem.. Excuse me? Somebody talking about diving?’
Dhoni: ‘Oh you..! You will be the attacking mid’finger’… Oops.. Midfielder :-P But no, your captain will not be sitting out. ;-)’
Rohit: ‘Hey Mahi..! I can be the second midfielder! I can ‘kick’ quite well. In fact, the match referee wanted to meet me personally, after the last time I kicked something on the field… 8-)’
Harbhajan: ‘And Nita and I met the financer…’ :-@
Dhoni: ‘Settled. You two be the midfielders and Raina will be one of the strikers, you two will be ‘assisting’ him.. :-P :-P’
Kohli & Rohit: ‘Grrrrrr…..’
Srini: ‘What about the other striker?’
Sunny: ‘Yuvraj Singh is one of the cleanest ‘strikers’ of the…’
Dhoni (completing it for Sunny): ‘..cricket ball. He will crack his toe if he tries shooting a cricket ball..’
Ravi Shastri: ‘Sunny is seeing it like a ‘football’ now…’
Players: ‘!#$%^&*!!! God!! Save us!!!’
Sachin Tendulkar: ‘Ailaaa.. Who called me ?? I am busy with my new job. Yeah, my focus will be on cricket, but I will also work for the development of other sports like book-cricket, stick-cricket…’
Srini: :’( :’(
Harbhajan: ‘Hey !! I was in the ad!! I need to be in the team too…! 400 wickets in 98 Tests, not bad… I can strike very well…!!’
Ashwin: ‘All that you can strike is Sree’s cheek :-P :-P I can turn the ball both ways and so, I’m the right choice!!’
Harbhajan: ‘But I’m the one with a ‘hat-trick’!! Ha haa..!! Loser..!! :-P Remember Kolkata ?!’ (Seeing SRK and Gauti brighten up, he quickly added) ‘No!! No!! Forget what I said finally!!!’
- India’s hat-trick hero!! An automatic choice ‘striker’!!
Dhoni: ‘Hmmmm.. valid point..! Okay, Bhajji can be the other striker… We will have Sree as the second sub, to motivate him further..’ :-P
Suddenly, someone enters the room and removes his ‘escape-from-fans-incognito’ mask. It was the million dollar baby!
Jadeja: ‘Er… How about me??!!’
(The entire group frantically made for the exit. Srini was heard muttering ‘..given for charity instead..’ as he crossed Jaddu.)
Team India:
- The Indian team: MSD – #7, Viru – Obvious, Gauti – #5, Kohli – #18, Rohit – #45, Bhajji – #3, Raina – #48
Extraaas:
I managed to dig out a particularly insightful book that explains the rules of this hybrid game, unofficially named ‘Soc-ket’. Here are a couple of excerpts.
1. “Goals will be called ‘Havells Plugs in the Soc-ket‘, Free-kicks and spot-kicks will be called ‘Pepsi kick-ass moments‘ and corner kicks will be called ‘Pizza-Corner Crusts and Crumbs‘.”
2. “Like the offside rule, we have a ‘Leg-side‘ rule to control how deep defenders get into their own area, when the ball is in the other half. Without doubt, it is complex and debatable like its opposite. For starters, we can just say, defenders can no longer chat with their goalkeeper about the night’s after-parties, whilst the ball is in the other half.”
(Interested readers can contact me for more such ‘unbelievably-real’ rules of the game, taken from The ‘only-available-copy’ Rulebook of Soc-ket – The game for the future)
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